Even if Walk Hard—the Jake Kasdan/Judd Apatow send-up of Oscar-bait musical biopics like Walk the Line, Ray and the upcoming Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds—turns out to be a letdown, we're at least being entertained by their recent For Your Consideration campaign in the trades. Following John C. Reilly/Dewey Cox's bird-flipping invitation for Academy members to recognize his bravura performance is a new ad in today's Variety, in which Cox, obviously in the throes of whatever substance was fueling a creatively fertile, experimental period in his career, even more defiantly demands the recognition of his peers.

In yet another story about How The Writers Strike Has Affected, Is Currently Affecting, Our Will Affect The Lives of TV And/Or Movie-Loving Americans, the AP looks at the impact the walkout may have on the slew of upcoming awards shows dependent on the work of WGA professionals to provide the monologue jokes, seemingly off-the-cuff banter, and cutting-edge film-parody montages that help fill out the ceremonies' blink-and-you've-missed-four-hours-of-your-life- you'll-never-get-back running times. Reps from the Academy and the HFPA opine on how the strike might hamper both Hollywood's Biggest and Drunkest Nights, respectively:

Congratulations are in order for actress/scenester/pre-achievement semicelebrity Rumer Willis, who earlier today was crowned Miss Golden Globe 2008, the single highest honor the Hollywood Foreign Press Association can bestow upon the female, teenage progeny of an internationally recognizable performer whose staggering success is unlikely to be replicated by his or her pampered offspring.

· NBC drops out of the Television Critics Association winter press tour due to the writers strike, a move that will rob reporters of the chance to witness a retaliatory beatdown of Peacock perfect storm Ben Silverman by the network-running rivals he recently disparaged as "D-girls". [Variety]
· Entourage's Kevin Dillon joins Emma Roberts, Don Cheadle and Lisa Kudrow in hotly anticipated canine-housing drama Hotel for Dogs. [THR]
· Wistfully envisioning a time when writers and studios can once again skip down Hollywood Blvd hand-in-hand, New Line signs Neil LaBute to script a remake of The Woman Next Door once the strike is over. Helen Mirren's husband [Ed. note—HAAACKFORD!] to direct. [Variety]

The National Book Critics Circle blog, called "Critical Mass," is the place we go to get unreasonable and uninformed comment on matters of the day. But now it's reaching new heights of excitement! Blogs Joan Silber, a 2004 National Book Award Finalist: "As it happens, I'm talking to you during the particular week when I'm moving out of a loft in Noho where I've lived for 33 years."

· The Writers' Guild of Great Britain says they're in solidarity with the WGA, and is planning to stage an awards ceremony on Sunday to remind the world that scribes are to be cherished and celebrated, not placed in front of studio gates for SUV target practice. [Variety]
· This year's Oscar contenders display a "bleak, even nihilistic worldview," a largely coincidental development as all were put into production long before Hollywood's collective spirits were darkened by the ongoing labor Armageddon. Should the strike drag on into February, look for replacement host Ryan Seacrest to provide an appropriately somber tone to the proceedings. [THR]
· The Pinkett-Smith family is getting together to make the drama The Human Contract, a film Jada is directing and writing and Will is executive producing. No role is specified for precocious son Jaden, though he may eventually be awarded an associate producer credit for secretly punching up the script during trips to the set with mom and dad. [ Variety]

The shuttering of Morton's, the longtime home of the post-Oscar orgy where Vanity Fair invites a few hundred of its closest Hollywood friends over to enjoy a second round of congratulatory fellatio, has necessitated a change of venue for the most eagerly anticipated bash of the awards season. Variety reports that editor Graydon Carter has chosen Craft's new Century City outpost for this year's event, a location nestled so close to the CAA Death Star that the restaurant's management often has to ask the evil agency to change the position of the enormous laser cannon on its roof to minimize the shadows it casts across its dining area. Say Var:

· The trades discuss yesterday's big strike news that's allowing Hollywood its first glimmer of hope that a walkout might be avoided. (Please, no one say anything about the internet and digital downloads and ruin the town's brief buzz.) Also, THR unveils its stunning, strike-related news logo (at left). [THR, Variety]
· You know who hasn't had an unfunny family sitcom for far too long? Damon Wayans! Don't worry, ABC is busy filling this gaping hole in its primetime lineup. [THR]

We dispatched Defamer videographer Molly McAleer to the 2007 High Times Stony Awards (congratulations to Stoner of the Year Seth Rogen!), where she enticed munchies-afflicted celebrities strolling down the green carpet with homemade snickerdoodles and an inviting smile. It was a potent combination, that got Tommy Chong to open up about the "unauthorized" Cheech n' Chong biography he's writing, and Lindsay Lohan's main Mean Girls homegay, Daniel Franzese, to employ an arm-breaking metaphor in discussing her recent cokepanted troubles.

While we at Defamer aren't typically in the business of reporting about any award that isn't voted upon by industry guilds or the George Lopez-Loving People, we nevertheless feel obliged to relay the news that former Vice President and Lifetime Friend to Prius-Driving Hollywood Types Al Gore was awarded the Nobel Prize today, along with his colleagues from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. (You'll think us crazy, but we dreamed this would happen, in an epic nighttime hallucination involving Leonardo DiCaprio applying suntan lotion to Gore's back on a polar ice cap melted down to approximately the size of a manhole cover.) Leave it to the British, then, to acid rain on his Peace Prize parade:

Mediabistro, the little $23-million media company that could, is turning 10! So they're throwing themselves a party tonight, with a special extra: The Golden Boa Awards, which recognizes 10 media stars from "from within the 10 verticals that mediabistro.com serves," according to the press release. Mmm, verticals. Each lucky honoree will go home tonight with an actual bronzed feather boa—provided, that is, that they show up—in honor of nutty genius and former owner and for-now senior vice president Laurel Touby. But which of these 10 "media stars" might you see if you crash?

Many awards show viewers still long for the heyday of the late '90s, when unsuspecting stars would recoil in terror upon being accosted by Grand Frock Inquisitioner Joan Rivers, followed closely behind by loyal henchspawn Melissa, one finger held to her ear as she received instruction on the proper pronunciation of "Benicio Del Toro." Alas, after being bumped from their now-legendary E! gig, and banished from the TV Guide Channel kingdom for rumored "difficult" behavior, the only place Emmy watchers can turn these days for a Rivers fix is online, at VH1's Emmys With Joan. Gold Derby's Tom O'Neil wonders if the pair's seemingly shameful banishment to the slums of the blogowebs doesn't perhaps bode well, suggesting the network might take a short break from finding Flavor Flav the skank of his dreams to secure Joan and Melissa a spot on the red carpet:

We have to admit that we're disappointed in Griffin's admission—we'd secretly hoped that we were witnessing a genuine conversion experience as the comedian publicly prostrated herself before that graven Creative Arts idol and flipped off the Messiah as a pledge of allegiance to her gilded new God, and not just a cynical attempt at seeing how many Tennesseean theater groups she could induce to bankrupt themselves by buying full-page USA Today ads decrying her blasphemy.

We enjoy nothing more on the day after the Emmys than to check in with Bravo executive Andy Cohen, on whom we can invariably rely for an uncensored, eyewitness take on the proceedings. Sadly, there is none of the ebullient, "Wowza!!!!!!" -chanting Andy of nomination day in today's post, as much of the air appears to have been taken out of his sails by the roughly 80 people who accepted last night in his category for The Amazing Race. It was a bitter defeat that brought out an ugly side to the blogging bon vivant, who manages in a matter of just a few sentences to disparage such universally beloved figures as America Ferrera, Helen Mirren, and the show's sexually ambiguous, label-divining host:

As A-list TV Gays like T.R. Knight and Neil Patrick Harris experienced the Emmy awards en ronde inside the industry-embracing walls of the Shrine Auditorium, their lesser-known counterparts piled into West Hollywood drinking establishment East West for an "OUT at The Emmys" viewing party. Defamer videologist Molly McAleer was on hand to capture the red carpet arrivals, which she edited together into a touching tribute to emerging talent she calls Gay D-Listers Spelling Their Names for the Cameras. Alas, it's but one on the minor job hazards on their way up Hollywood's slippery velvet ladder, one Logo-reality-series step at a time.

· Last night's Emmys drew the second-smallest TV audience in the awards show's history with an anemic average of 13.1 million viewers. No one, it seems, was tantalized by the sketchy possibility of Britney Spears showing up to apologize for destroying her career, or by the prospect of emergency host Ryan Seacrest breaking into song. Congratulations, America: you saved yourself over three hours of torture. (We were not so lucky.) [Variety]
· Tina Fey hopes 30 Rock's big win for Best Comedy Series will bring viewers to her show—obviously, she wasn't privy to the preliminary Emmy Nielsens when she made that crazy wish. [THR]
· AMC has an Emmy coming-out party, capturing four awards for Broken Trail. [Variety]
· Remember Pop-Up Video, the show that provided you with amusing, if useless, factoids about the "music videos" one used to be able to watch on VH1? It's coming back in a mobile format, allowing you to learn everything you ever wanted to know about "Hollaback Girl" by staring at your cellphone's tiny screen while stopped at a red light. [THR]
· Internet-creating former VP Al Gore doesn't even know the URL of his interactive TV network's website. [Update: Whoops, yes he does!] [variety]

It's telling that seemingly the only thing worth discussing following last night's Emmys—an exercise in show business self-gratification only marginally more entertaining than watching a Lassie stand-in lick its genitals between camera set-ups—are the three words we weren't allowed to hear (to review: "screwing," "[shit]," and "goddamn") during the telecast.

We're still (pretty unsuccessfully) trying to shake off our Emmys hangover—drinking was really the only way to make it through all three-plus hours of last night's telecast without going insane from boredom—but we're now lucid enough to tackle the "mystery" of that trio of perplexing cuts (compiled in the above clip) from Ray Romano, Katherine "If You Call Me Hi-Jel I Will Fucking Cut You" Heigl, and Sally Field to the giant, profanity-erasing Sphere of Censorship hanging in the rafters of the Shrine.

We're well aware that "spoilers" for virtually every award handed out during tonight's Emmys telecast are readily available on these internets, but we've avoided ruining what we're sure will be a evening of amazing surprises by checking news sites or watching the east coast feed. Join us, if you will, in submitting to the Fox network's tape-delay illusion that we're experiencing Emmy magic as it happens.

After much soul-searching and the realization that we really have nothing better to do on Sunday night, we decided we'll probably* be liveblogging the Emmys. If watching the show with a computer on your lap is the sort of thing that interests you, check back here at 5pm PST (or if we can't find someone with the east coast satellite feed, come by at 8pm PST for a tape-delayblog). See you then, maybe!